Exercise is NOT the answer to real Weight Loss

What is the most popular New Year’s resolution people make, year after year? You guessed it, WEIGHT LOSS. I know this won’t be a shock to anyone, at least I hope not, but America is the most obese country in the WORLD! So this time of year is like a feeding frenzy for anyone trying to help you lose weight. It’s like being thrown into a river where the fitness centers and diet clinics are the Piranha – and you are their next meal!

Fitness centers make their year right now – getting people signed up for memberships. But here is a shocker… it is highly unlikely you will be able to lose a significant amount of weight through exercise. That’s right, all the advertisements and promotion are about “getting in shape” and we assume this means weight loss. It doesn’t. Let me explain why and see if this doesn’t make more sense than what you might have been led to believe.

There is plenty of research out there to support why this is true, but let me share with you my own personal experience about why exercise simply produces a healthier fat person, not a skinny person. It’s hard to disagree with the majority of experts when they tell us a really healthy state has more to do with food consumption and nutrition than exercise. I take this even further and say, “IT IS ALL ABOUT NUTRITION!” It isn’t how much we eat that makes us fat, it’s what we eat.

Here’s the easy, common sense, interpretation of what this really means. Our body knows what it needs to survive better than we do. They are miraculous machines designed to take care of themselves very effectively if provided with the fuel to make everything function as it was intended. And, it tries to tell us when it is not getting what it needs to survive. It really is just this simple. The answer for diet and fitness companies is to prescribe a reduction in caloric intake if you want to lose weight – in other words, stop eating so much. While this might be conventional thinking and what we have been led to believe, our bodies are saying this isn’t what it needs to survive.

Nutritious food is the fuel your BODY CRAVES and needs for it to survive – that’s it, no complex formulas, no exotic programs, no dieting, just NUTRITION. Simple. And when you feed it highly nutritious food, it DOESN’T NEED TO STORE FAT. This is the way your body wants you to achieve your own “optimal weight” – not by starving it or working it to death. Give it lots of nutrient dense food and it won’t feel like it needs to store more fat because it knows it’s getting taken care of. It has to store fat because it isn’t getting the nutritious food it needs, so it panics and stores fat instead (more on this in another post).

So do your body a favor, give it the fuel it needs, nutritious food, and a light exercise program, like walking or yoga, to support it while it is being fed and losing weight. More aggressive exercise for maintenance after weight loss and you’ve got a great combination for a healthy body and achieving your own Optimal.